


this myth ends the same whichever way you build it

by sidereality



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Heavy Angst, Mentions of Death, Personification of Death, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, manmade immortality? kinda?, mentions of human experimentation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-08-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:20:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25572742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sidereality/pseuds/sidereality
Summary: in another world, maybe she wouldn’t be able to greet him with such familiarity when he approaches like a lover forbidden from touching her, scorned again and again, but ever-faithful at her side.  in another life, angela would not have to watch him take everyone she has ever known before he lays a hand on her at last.  (it is simply easier to avert your gaze from the blinding brightness of angela’s youth than to acknowledge death, hungry at her heels, in the shadow she casts.)on angela and mortality.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	1. there are people who love her, but no one will ever love her like he does.

**Author's Note:**

> title from the poem lovers of the light by elizabeth hewer.

_**i.** _

It’s too easy, in the breakneck pace of life at Overwatch, to forget how young the doctor is–– that beneath the gentle hands and staggering intellect, beneath the deliberate steadiness of her manner and ready smile, Angela Ziegler has not even seen a quarter of a century. They say you can see it in a person’s eyes when they’ve grown up faster than they should have. Old souls in young bodies. But none of them had normal childhoods with the war hanging over them. The only difference is that maybe Angela will outlive it. (Maybe she’ll outlive them all.) 

Today, Angela is twenty-two, and she could tell you exactly what it’s like to have someone else’s blood burn through the palms of her gloves while rubble scrapes her knees. She’s twenty-two, and there are people twice her age that are her subordinates; people who look at her like she can work miracles and resent her for it when she can’t; people who want to prevent her from saving some ‘no-name soldier on the frontlines’ because ‘this is a war, Ziegler, soldiers die every day, but patenting your nanites could give you _and_ me a good life, eh?’ 

In another world, Angela Ziegler would be a twenty-two year old without the experience of being head of surgery at a world-renowned hospital under her belt, much less the responsibilities of being the head of medical research in a _goddamn_ _international paramilitary organization_. She would be smiling and gritting her teeth and correcting people when they call her “miss,” quantifying each word so they’ll forget she’s a young woman in a field where men _still_ feel like their chromosomes make them superior. 

But in this world, Angela was twenty-one when she shook John Morrison’s hand and said _yes_. Maybe she was supposed to know better than to put her name down for a war she never wanted to fight, but here she is: Overwatch’s goddamn guardian angel, haloed saviour, laureate woman of science, _Mercy on call_. Some faceless UN bureaucrat had shaken her hand and told her “we expect great things from you.” It’s the same thing she’s heard all her life; that she must always _be_ better, _do_ better. It’s simply what’s expected of her. Now she just has a fancier title for it. 

So she’s supposed to be an endless fount of reassurance and fortitude (grin and bear it–– there’s no time to waver when you have so many threads spooled in your palm), supposed to provide direction (all she wants to do is immerse herself in her research, but there are six new pending project proposals in her inbox), supposed to provide a sense of calm in the cacophony that is war (except all the noise complaints at 3am are because she and Moira are at each other’s throats again). She’s supposed to _listen to this and tell me what you think_ , she’s supposed to _get this paperwork back to me by 1300 tomorrow_ , she’s supposed to know what the fuck is going on all the time because the looks she gets when she’s confused about anything makes her want to burn the whole world down.

She’s supposed to remember what her mother’s arms felt like around her shoulders. Or what her father’s smile looked like outside of the pictures she has, the memories of his laugh on a crisp autumn afternoon fading with age. 

_Those are old threads_ , the Fates say, tugging the golden line of Angela’s life bowstring-taut. _Is it not the way of the world for things to die so that something better may thrive?_

Angela doesn’t answer. 

She just blows out the candle on the cupcake someone left on her desk, and pretends that there are still people in this world who knew who Angela Ziegler was before she made a name for herself as a prodigy. Death, sitting at her heels like a tamed hound, watches her with eyes the cornflower blue her mother’s were.


	2. arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort!

_**ii.** _

Ana always frowns when Angela asks to be the death messenger for soldiers killed in the line of duty who signed on for her nanite enhancement trials. Each of them so eager to sign up, only to burn from the inside out from _too much_ _too soon_ when she is flooding their fading bodies with more–– because it _has_ to work, it just _has_ to–– even when she _knows_ at her core that she can do no more, she always _tries_ until someone pulls her away, her palms badly burned, still reaching for a body that is convulsing, sparking, blood turning black as it _boils_. 

But Ana always says yes, her mouth set with an emotion that is all at once pity and anger, letting Angela’s hands curl around whatever remains are to be returned to the family. Sometimes all she gives Angela are the datapads with information on the fallen, and nothing else. Every time, Angela grips the edges of the ‘pads so tight her knuckles whiten, all so her hands won’t shake. 

The burns on her palms are always healed by the time she’s ready to do the grim duty. She thinks about scraped knuckles with scabs torn off, stitches pulling apart, the sleek white-blue lines of the holopads marred red. 

But even her injuries are ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> arrête, c'est ici l'empire de la mort! - stop, this is the empire of death!  
> as used to describe the entrance to the paris catacombs.

**Author's Note:**

> an important thing to note about my characterization of angela, as is the case with many other writers/roleplayers, is that due to her self-experimentation with nanotechnology, her aging is extremely slowed and her lifespan is greatly increased. which is why she looks like she’s in her twenties when she’s 37 in game, totally not to give lore to the inexplicable reason that blizz are cowards and gave her ~young beautiful face~ bc they’re afraid to let women age :D


End file.
